Modeling Boundary Crossing Supercells

Supercell thunderstorms have been known to produce enhanced severe weather when in the vicinity of thermal boundaries. The thermal boundaries, in this case, a preexisting outflow boundary, are believed to enhance the low level vorticity of nearby thunderstorms. It has been suggested that many tornado-producing storms occur in close proximity to low-level boundaries not directly associated with the storm. A modeling study of boundary crossing thunderstorms is performed using a non-hydrostatic cloud model to initialize thunderstorms in a heterogeneous environment. Storms are analyzed as they cross the implemented outflow boundary to determine the change in characteristics of the storm structure. Analysis of vorticity is performed to determine how the boundary affects the vorticity budget of the storm.